Oh, this girl. Let's just start from the beginning. This pregnancy has been dramatic from the start.
Around 6
weeks pregnant, I started cramping and spotting a good bit. No one knew about
the pregnancy yet because we wanted to wait until we got to tell my parents in
person in November (10 weeks). It was a pretty emotional time for us and was
made even more difficult by having to keep it a secret for so long. I debated
telling them all over the phone. My mind kept trying to write the script to
tell them that I had lost the baby, but I refused to let it.
After an emergency
call on the weekend to the doctor on call, I was told to “keep your feet up
because it won’t help you keep the baby, but it will make you feel less guilty
if you lose it.” Not comforting whatsoever. So, I kept my feet up and scheduled
an appointment for Monday morning. On Monday morning, I was relieved to hear a
heartbeat. Relieved is really an
understatement. That was one of the longest weekends of our lives. The doctor
could see the fear in my eyes and offered hugs before I left the room. I had
some lab results done that showed that my body wasn’t producing one of the
hormones that I needed to keep the baby alive. That night, I was put on
hormones in hopes that my numbers would increase within the next 48 hours. (This was after I lost my cool at the pharmacy
when they told me that they lost the prescription for the hormone. Ever seen a
mother fight for the life of her child? It was not pretty). After much prayer
and many trips to the lab for blood work, my numbers had barely increased to
the normal level within the 48 hour window.
I took Beckett with me to a few of the lab draws. In the
midst of all of this drama, as I thought that we were losing our baby, Beckett
sat in the back of the car as we were about to get out and said “Mom, can I
pray for you before we go into the doctor’s office?” I was already extremely
emotional but add your 3 year old, who
has no idea what is going on, praying for peace over you as you “get a shot” …
seriously y’all, I can’t even explain it. So, I sat in the car for quite a
while trying to regain my composure and hiding my face from him as I ugly
cried. With two months’ worth of
hormones, but most of all by the grace of God, we were blessed to be able to
keep this sweet baby. A week or two
later, I was diagnosed with a subchorionic hemorrhage which explained the
previous bleeding. At 10 weeks pregnant, Beckett and I flew to SC for
Thanksgiving to announce the news to my parents. We stayed in SC for almost two
weeks.
Two nights before we were supposed to fly back to Oklahoma, I started
spotting again. This time at 11 weeks. Once again, negative thoughts flooded my
mind. My parents and Beckett quickly gathered in the living room to pray for
protection for this baby. My mom and I were headed to the ER as I was on the
phone with the on-call doctor in Oklahoma. This doctor was much more reassuring
than the last doctor that I had spoken to and said that it didn’t necessarily
sound like a miscarriage to her. So mom
and I turned the car around and headed back home. The next day, my doctor
called and said that I would need to be seen and have the baby checked out
before I could fly home. Oh, did I mention that Blake was in Las Vegas for work
and I didn’t tell him any of this because I didn’t want to freak him out until
I knew that the baby was okay. I did a little bit of research and found an
imaging center that would do a scan for only $50. Mom called and explained the
situation. Although, she doesn’t usually take patients experiencing problems,
we assured her that we only needed to see that the baby was still breathing and
okay so that I could get on a flight. She was so sweet and let us spend so much
time watching the baby move around and suck her thumb. The subchorionic
hemorrhage was no longer there, which meant that the spotting was due to my
body releasing the hemorrhage.
Isn’t it amazing how the fear of losing your
child can cause you to spend so much time in prayer and scripture? I constantly
had Bible verses pulled up on my phone that spoke life over this baby. As soon
as I turned the screen on, these verses popped up. Why did I do this? Because
the internet can be a brutal tool during pregnancy. If I wasn’t meditating on
scripture, then I would be meditating on the results from WebMD. This is a quote that I found early in the
pregnancy that I referred back to so many times throughout this time. “As with
every circumstance in our lives, when trouble comes during pregnancy, the first
port of call is the Bible. If you want a realistic report, see your doctor. If
you want a reason to worry and fear, check the internet. If you want faith for
a miracle outcome, meditate on the Word.”
The next 8 weeks were drama free for the most part. The
morning sickness was gone, the severe back pain was gone, I no longer had to
take hormone supplements, and I felt like a normal pregnant person.
At 20 weeks, we had our routine scan. It went much quicker
than we expected it to, so we assumed that meant that everything was perfect.
They sent us on our way and we had a follow up appointment at our doctor’s
office a few days later to get the results. Ironically, our doctor was out for
6 weeks with a family emergency, so we had a different doctor that we had never
met filling in for her. She quickly reviewed our chart and said “you have
something called Velamentous Cord Insertion” and then she continued with the
ultrasound. My mind started spinning in circles. I guess that since I wasn’t
her patient, she didn’t feel the need to explain in further detail. Blake and I
were so stunned that we couldn’t even think of what questions to ask. I was thinking a thousand thoughts per minute.
Finally, halfway through the ultrasound I asked what Velamentous Cord Insertion
meant. She responded “it basically means that you will need a c-section.” And
that was the end of the story.
We walked out of the doctor’s office completely
clueless as to what was going on. So, we did what every parent would do and did
our own research. I know that this is always a mistake, but at the time we just
wanted to know what this diagnosis entailed. We learned after researching and
talking to some doctors that Velamentous Cord Insertion was an umbilical cord
abnormality that happens in only 1% of pregnancies. Sometimes VCI can cause a
baby to stop growing in utero. From our understanding, the umbilical cord is
missing the protective jelly surrounding it. This usually doesn’t become a big
deal until the day of delivery. Because the cord and vessels are unprotected,
there is a chance of the cord breaking due to the pressure of delivery. If the
cord were to break during delivery, we would lose the baby and I could have
severe internal bleeding. Therefore, a c-section is recommended to avoid the
pressure from pregnancy. The decision
was very clear to both of us and we were at peace with the decision that we had
made. We weren’t willing to risk the life of our daughter through natural
delivery, so we decided to plan our c-section. Although I knew that the
recovery from a c-section would be tougher, we had talked ourselves into the
many perks of going in that direction (setting a definite date, making plans
for my parents to be out here, and obviously not having to worry about the risk
of VCI).
At 30 weeks I began having contractions. They weren’t
painful contractions, just Braxton-Hicks, but I was having them way too often. I knew that I had been pushing it a bit too
hard the week before. I had several huge events going on, and refused to rest
when I felt that I needed to. I worked up until the day that Beckett was born
and was expecting to do the same with this baby. However, she had other plans.
So, with the threat of having the baby at 30 weeks and having contractions
every time I stood up, I was put on bed rest starting at week 30. Talk about
frustrating. I’m not the type of person to sit around and relax. I like to go
when I want to go and absolutely hate being restricted. However, the threat of
having a baby at 30 weeks was enough to keep me down, whether I liked it or
not.
At 32 weeks, we had another appointment with the specialist
who diagnosed the Velamentous Cord Insertion. He talked about how great the
baby looked and assured us that the diagnosis wasn’t affecting her growth at
all. He also seemed to think that what he was seeing was more consistent with
Marginal Cord Insertion rather than Velamentous. I’m no medical expert, but
apparently this was great news. From our understanding, the umbilical is now a
normal umbilical cord, but still in the wrong location. However, our cord is
positioned in a way that it shouldn’t be a danger to the baby during childbirth
and the chances of it
breaking are much less risky. Our doctor requested that he push our c-section date up a week so that the chances of me going into labor on my own were decreased. The specialist refused and took the c-section off of the table completely
and was very clear that he was against our OB taking that route. Blake and I
once again left much more confused than we were when we went in. We went in
very comfortable with our decision to have a c-section, so when he removed that
option completely, you can imagine our state of confusion. The next day, I
called the OB to have her explain further. She said that she too was shocked by
his decision, but that she trusted his opinion enough to try a natural
delivery. We were reassured by several people that the specialist was never wrong and that we should trust him to make the best decision for our baby.
After I got off of the phone, I cried…again. I knew that
this was truly a huge blessing, however, the change of plans really rattled my
mind. So many questions ran through my mind. “What if he is wrong and it really
is Velamentous? If he was mistaken the first time, why couldn’t he be mistaken
this time? How can he tell the difference between the two? He never said that
it wasn’t Velamentous, he just said that it was more in line with Marginal. How
can he be so sure?” To us, this wasn’t just a matter of having a c-section
versus having a natural delivery. It was a matter of having, what we felt was,
the safest way of delivery being taken away from us and not being allowed to
have any say.
After my pity party, Blake and I both decided to change our
way of thinking. Could this be the miracle that we asked everyone to pray for?
What a huge blessing it was to have something way less dangerous than we
thought. Our prayers were answered and we couldn’t even take the time to
acknowledge how great our God is because we were too worried that the doctor
had made a mistake. Five minutes after I got off of the phone, Blake sent me
that morning’s devotional. The verse for that day was Proverbs 3:5-6 “With all
your heart you must trust the Lord and not your own judgement. Always let him
lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow.” I’ve had this verse
memorized for years, but sometimes when you see things in a different version
and under specific circumstances, it speaks to you a little bit differently.
Specifically the words “not your own judgement.” So, we made the choice to
trust that God knows what he is doing. He hasn’t failed us yet.
So, at 38 weeks pregnant, I sit here with both an induction
date and c-section date on June 15th (our c-section date was
supposed to be cancelled, but I think the doctor forgot to do so). The plan is to induce a week early so that I can labor and deliver in an a controlled environment rather than a risky delivery in the middle of the night without the presence of my regular doctor. We find it
humorous and a great reminder of how strange and confusing this pregnancy has
been. One thing is for sure. God is good and has had favor on this pregnancy.
We went from almost losing her, to a very rare diagnosis, to now being treated
like an almost normal patient. We have loved the name Jensen for a while, but
knowing the meaning of the name really makes it even more fitting for our baby
girl. Jensen means “Jehovah has been gracious; He has shown favor.” God has
definitely shown His favor thus far and we know that He will continue to do so.
